Basically, this is what we're looking for:
2 or 3 people (maybe up to four or five if there's massive interest (which I doubt)) who're willing to play through TI Act 1 several times in the space of two to four weeks. The act contains ten or eleven missions, pending the outcome of the a couple of current FREDding experiments, and is balanced to be quite tough (though not impossible). You'll need a reasonably competent PC (nothing too nuts, if you could handle Blue Planet you'll handle TI), a recent FSO build (3.6.14 RC1 is probably required, though they're up to RC2 now), and the time to devote to a project like this for several weeks in January. That part's critical - what we're not looking for are people who'll play through the campaign once, without really straining it, and post a message at the end with something like "Pretty good, needs more Shivans", or whatever. Rather, we'll need fairly detailed write ups on each mission, primarily looking for bugs, but also with some commentary on things like the difficulty and balance of the mission, what you liked and disliked, any suggested changes, problems with individual mods, spelling and grammar mistakes etc. etc. You'll need to take notes while you're playing, and make an effort to try unusual and creative ways to break missions.
Now, obviously, the missions will have been tested before you get them, so there shouldn't be any real showstoppers, but even if they are, you won't need any FREDding skills for this job. In fact, you'll be specifically requested not to make any changes yourselves, just solely to prevent multiple copies of missions floating around. All you'll need to do is play (and play and play and play) and report back.
As usual with FS projects, we can't offer much in return - obviously, you'll be among the first to play TI (then you can brag to your friends about how you were playing it before it was big), and you'll get to influence changes to the final product, which is cool. If you enjoy it, and do a good job, we'll probably come and ask you to do more betaing for the next release (which wont take as long as this one did
)... so I guess that means that your reward for doing work would be... more work. We can't even offer the usual beta testing carrot of early access to lots of exclusive ships, because several of our mods wont be completed until later in the months, and you'll be testing with standins (detailed standins, of course - nothing that'll change balance, it'll mostly be half textured pofs and stuff).So, in summary, we need
Beta testers with time on their hands in January who're
Willing to play the ten or eleven missions of Act 1 several times and
Capable of writing up reasonably detailed reports of bugs and impressions after playing each mission.
If you're interested, let me know before the end of the year.
